Showing individual pictures is great for that "pass the picture of your dog around the restaurant table" experience, but when you're ready to tell the complete story, a slideshow's the only way to go. Follow along and I'll show you how to present one of your own.
The key to the perfect iPod slideshow is the iPod Photo's Slideshow Settings screen. To access the screen, choose Photos from the iPod's main screen, and press the Select button. In the resulting Photos screen, you'll find the Slideshow Settings entry, along with a list of all the photo albums on your iPod. For now, select Slideshow Settings, and press Select again (Figure 3.6).
You've arrived at the Slideshow Settings screen, where you can configure such important settings as how long each slide will play, the music that will accompany your slideshow, and the type of TV signal the iPod will output. Let's run through all this screen's commands.
Simple enough. You have six choices: Manual, 2 Seconds, 3 Seconds, 5 Seconds, 10 Seconds, and 20 Seconds. It's none of my business how you go about your business, but I might offer a couple of hints here.
The first is that if you plan to narrate your pictures, choose Manual. This option allows you to decide when to advance to the next slide.
If you won't be narrating your slides, and you want to give your audience a reasonable amount of time to ooh and ahh, choose 3 Seconds or 5 Seconds. The 2 Seconds setting gives the crowd barely enough time to know what they're looking at before the next slide rolls in.
Ten seconds is a long time to look at a picture unless you're really interested in the subject. And 20 seconds is darned near an eternity unless that picture is of your latest newborn or that hottie from Chemistry class. Before choosing one of these longer settings, be sure that your audience will be engaged for the length of each slide. And if you're showing a lot of slides, be very, very careful unless your intention is to move your guests out of your home as quickly as possible.
Another simple one. From this screen, you choose the playlist you'd like to accompany your slideshow. What's that? You say you just want to play one song, not an entire playlist? No problem; just use the iPod's On-The-Go feature to create a one-song playlist. On-The-Go is the last choice in the Slideshow Music screen. And if you'd like a silent slideshow, just choose Off.
This is a simple binary command: On or Off.
Here's another either/or command. If you'd like the pictures from the selected album to be displayed randomly, switch Shuffle Photos to On.
Making this command plural is slightly deceiving to the extent that it may lead you to believe that the iPod Photo offers more than one transition. Currently, it doesn't. When this command is set to On, a left-to-right wipe transition is placed between each slide.
You have three options here: Off, Ask, and On.
Off means that no slideshow will display on a TV attached via the iPod's A/V cable or the Dock's S-Video port. When you play a slideshow, that show displays normally on the iPod.
Choosing Ask causes the iPod to display the Start Slideshow screen, where you'll see one of two messages:
Slideshows can also be started by pressing the center button on any full screen photo.
or
Slideshows can also be started by pressing the play button on any highlighted photo or album.
Useful as all get-out, I agree, but the most helpful things about these screens, from my perspective, are the TV Off and TV On commands at the bottom of the display. If you have a TV attached to the iPod, choose TV On. If there's no TV present, choose TV Off.
Ask is a nice option if you routinely show slideshows on both the iPod and on your TV. Sure, it's one more click, but it saves you from continually jumping back to the Slideshow Settings screen.
Finally, On lets the iPod know that you'd like it to project its slideshow on an attached TV. If you haven't connected a television and leave this option on, you'll see a different sort of display on your iPod when you play a slideshow. A slideshow with TV Out off does what you'd expectshows a series of full-screen pictures. With TV Out on and no connected TV, you'll see a preview screenone that shows the current slide in the center of the screen, the previous slide in a smaller view to the left, and the next slide in a smaller view to the right. Yes, this is a way to preview your slides, but it's almost completely useless when you're watching the show on the iPod alone.
Having TV Out on while watching a slideshow also drains your iPod's battery charge much more rapidly than if you have TV Out off. Apple tells us that the iPod Photo can play a slideshow continuously for up to five hours (my tests indicate that it does a bit better than that). But this figure holds only if TV Out is switched to Off. With TV Out set to On, you'll get no more than two hours of continuous play time from a slideshow.
This is the command you'll likely have to set exactly once in the iPod's life unless you're a jet-setter. You can choose between NTSC and PAL output. NTSC is the television standard used in North America and Japan. PAL is the standard just about everywhere else. Choose the setting that makes sense for your television.
With the Slideshow Settings screen populated with two TV settings, one couldn't be blamed for thinking that the iPod must be connected to a television to project its pictures. But let's take a moment to think outside the box.
The iPod can output to any device that's willing to accept an S-Video or composite video connection. Take a look at your camcorder, and you'll likely find inputs for one or both of these video standards. Likewise, many Windows PC users will find a video card planted inside the PC that accepts one or both varieties of video. Why not put these inputs to good use by recording the video output of your iPod Photo?
Doing so works along the lines I've outlined for connecting the iPod to a television. Simply find that appropriate input on your computer, camcorder, or projector, and string the cable from here to there. After you've done this, you'll need to configure the input device to accept the iPod's signal. On a camcorder, this may mean digging down through a few menus to a Record Control function. On a PC, it might require delving into a program's preferences to select the correct input on your video card. And you will likely have to configure a projector to align with the iPod's chosen output refresh rate and resolution (60Hz, 640 x 480 is always a good place to start).
You've packed your iPod with the photos of your latest tour of Okeechobee, you've primed your audience with caffeine, and you're ready to rock. Rather than pass the iPod from hand to hand (and risk never seeing it again), why not put your pictures up on the big screen? Here's how:
1. Plug 'er in.
The iPod can project to a TV either through the included A/V cable or via the S-Video port on the iPod's Dock. The A/V cable's yellow connector is for composite video; the red connector is for the right audio channel; and the white connector is for the left audio channel. (Note that this cable bears a special three-ring miniplug sleevethe end that goes into the iPod's headphone portthat's designed to work specifically with the iPod. Other A/V cables are unlikely to work with the iPod Photo.)
If you have the option to use S-Video, do so. It will produce a better-looking picture, plus it gives you the option to use a really long cable. The iPod's A/V cable is just under 5 feet long, and if you plan to narrate over a manually controlled slideshow, you're going to be tethered fairly closely to your TV. Fifteen feet of S-Video cable will allow you to sit comfortably on the couch and control the show from the iPod planted in its Dock.
If you've configured your slideshow to be accompanied by music on your iPod, be sure to make an audio connectioneither from the two audio RCA plugs on the A/V cable or via the Audio Out port on the Dock, if you're using the Dock's S-Video connection.
2. Switch on TV Out.
Your iPod won't play on the television unless you tell it to.
3. Know what to expect.
If you have a picture on the iPod's screen, don't be surprised when it doesn't flash up on the TV screen the moment you plug in the iPod. Video from the iPod won't appear on the TV until you start a slideshow.
4. Start the show.
Choose an album from the iPod's Photos screen, and press Select. On the subsequent screen, you'll see thumbnail images of the pictures in the album on a five-by-five grid. Use the scroll wheel to move to the first picture you want to display, and press Play.
Pressing Play again will pause the slideshow.
After everyone's fallen asleep, there's no need to tax your iPod's battery further. Press Menu to stop the slideshow and return to the thumbnail screen.
I understand that there's a powerful lot of pleasure in housing the pictures of your second child's birth on a device as sleek as the iPod, but its picture-projecting powers can also be turned to more serious purposes. And if you're like me, when you hear the phrase "serious purposes" dropped into a casual conversation, you think one thing: PowerPoint.
That's rightyour iPod Photo can also be used as a portable PowerPoint presenter. Although the businesslike nature of the task may make it sound like a daunting undertaking, it's a cinch. Here's how:
1. Create or open a PowerPoint presentation.
2. Choose Save As from PowerPoint's File menu.
3. From the Format pop-up menu in the resulting Save As dialog box, choose TIFF (Tagged Image File Format); then click Save.
PowerPoint will save each slide as a separate TIFF image in a folder of your choosing.
I suggest TIFF rather than JPEG because TIFF is a lossless graphics format, whereas JPEG strips out information to create smaller files. When iTunes converts the slide for the iPod, it will do its own stripping. I see no reason to strip the file twice.
4. Connect your iPod Photo to your computer.
5. Launch iTunes 4.7 or later, choose Preferences from the iTunes menu, click the iPod tab, and then click the Photos tab in the iPod Preferences window.
6. Select Choose Folder from the Synchronize Photos From pop-up menu, and navigate to the folder full of images you exported from PowerPoint.
7. Click OK to load the images to your iPod.
8. Connect your iPod to a projector or television, configure its Slideshow Settings for a manual slideshow, and run your presentation from the iPod.